Honorary Literary Viking!

I'm'a pillage your word count and ravage your genre!

Also there will be mead!

Hooray!

Children Should Be Jim Beamed, Not Heard

I know we're supposed to be encouraging the younger generations to cultivate a more active and healthy lifestyle.

To get out and about more.

But I really wish the kids next-door would take up some new hobbies.

Like video-games.

Or drugs.

Because it's two a.m. in the morning and they're playing basketball up against the wall next to our freaking house and I can't bloody sleep!

What're YOU Looking At?

Ah poop and dang it.
I'm apparently drunk.
I mean not poop and dang it I'm drunk but poop and dang it I'm drunk and still remarkably lucid and not even at the stage where I start rambling in a slightly poetic and disjointed way that lets all the words run together and ends with me ranting in a slightly 'you know what, I should get my own free to air TV program' way that I will regret in the morning.
I'm all full of logic and shit.
Stupid moderate-to-high tolerance to alcohol!
Why am I able to type right now?
I mean seriously?
I'm spelling all the words correctly and everything and haven't even put extra 's's on the end of anything in a 'look at me I'm pretending to be like the internets' way that always ends with you accidentally saying 'LOL' in serious conversation and realising that you weren't actually being ironic that time and have become 'one of them'.
Two of my mates are having one of those deep conversations with extra +4 honesty that only comes with extra drinks and they are so profound right now that they haven't even realised that I'm posting to my blog on their computer.
I'm like an electronic ninja.
A stupidly sober-for-a-drunk-person electronic ninja!
OK maybe I am a bit drunk.
I will surely rue this on the morrow.

Update: Ruing has commenced on schedule.
Stupid normal-to-high susceptibility to hangover!

The Knee Bone May Be Connected To The Thigh Bone But What Should I Do With This Shirt?

Many moons ago I used to op shop*, I used to op shop like a crazy person.
Not because I like to get all whimsical and think about who might have owned the clothes before me**, I just like second-hand clothes.
They've already been broken in, you're less likely to bump into anyone wearing anything like what you're wearing*** and you don't have to go into the other shops with the scary folk and the teeth-grating repetitive music****.

Having recently found my way back into this interesting rummage-fest way o' life, I decided at the same time to try and reorganise my clothes for maximum efficiency only to find that I'm all crippled up with annoying overcomplications.
This is a basic run-down of the clothing classifications I've come up with so far in an attempt to cope.

• Stand-alone - You would look stupid wearing anything else with this, like a bag lady and not in a Derelicté fashionable way. Just don't try it, you haven't the skills to pull it off.
• Base - You can't wear this by itself, you will look like a hooker, but it is a good thing to wear other things on top of (especially if the other things have a plunging neckline).
• Mid-layer - You can't wear this by itself, you will look like an early 90s pop singer, put something on underneath it for heaven's sake!
• Outer - Usually a cardigan-type thingie that can go on top of other thingies, plays well with others.
• Either/Or - Possibly a base, can be a stand-alone, maybe a mid-layer, probably not an outer, this item of clothing writes tortured poetry in silver ink on black paper about being misunderstood.
• Jacket - This is a jacket, doi.
• Accessories - Oh Jesus, no! You are not ready for those! You can barely dress yourself, you're lucky you're being allowed shoes!
  

And that's not even taking into account pants*****.

This is probably the wrong way to go about things.
Next thing I know I'll find myself drawing up graphs and pie-charts that show the frequency of wear or patterns of item rotation and assigning the clothing cross-referencing ID numbers so that it's easy to coordinate when...

Y'know what, I'm just going to go back to getting dressed when half awake.
I'll leave them all in their exciting new categories but let the blissful blur of semi-consciousness dictate everything else.
The other way madness lies.



*Op shop = opportunity/charity/second-hand clothes store. Yes, yes I used it as a verb.
**Y'know I don't think I've ever thought about that until typing that sentence. Huh, how about that. As that kind of musing can lead to thinking that things may be haunted. Have I mentioned that before? That things that aren't under imminent threat from zombies or axe-murderers may be haunted? Just so you know.
***This may not be something that you're too worried about.
****Though you may be confronted by some older ladies with fearsome moustaches or people with truly awesome anime-inspired hair-dos.
*****My learning on the road to clothing enlightenment concerning pants has gotten as far as 'if you are wearing pants that have a striped pattern on them DO NOT wear a shirt that has stripes on it. Or else.'

I'm Doing This As Hard As I Can!

It is a commonly accepted fact that it is still the weekend until the sun comes up on a Monday.

Therefore it is still the weekend, I am not posting this late and could you all keep it down a bit?

The beer buzz is giving way to proto-hangover and my neck is killing me.

The week started out innocently enough, with me sitting in my office, tissue boxes on my feet, the evicted tissues jammed into the gaps around my closed door, effecting a self-imposed quarantine. Not because I was sick but because everyone else was* and I couldn’t afford to get any of their dirty dirty germs as I had tickets to Opeth and Disturbed.
In Adelaide and Melbourne respectively**.
Within two days of each other***.

Whatever doesn’t kill you might in some instances make you stronger but I didn’t appreciate the timing of this potential bout of viral empowerment. I had riding and rawking to do and didn’t want to be bubbling phlegm whilst I did it so I spent Monday and Tuesday eating meals comprised primarily of garlic (for both health and coworker repelling benefits) and mainlining orange juice and Echinacea.

One of my mates (whom I will call Awesome) was coming to Adelaide to see Opeth with me so Wednesday morning Awesome and I rocked up to the coach terminal for our trip to Adelaide and after a very short time came to this simple conclusion:

DON'T TAKE THE FREAKING COACH!

It’s 10 hours crammed into a recirculating box of smells, there are people loudly reenacting episodes of Days of Our Lives into mobile phones**** and they will try make you watch Nancy Drew on the coach’s AV system.
DO NOT WATCH! Close your eyes and listen to The Downward Spiral or something.

Adelaide may be a smaller city than Melbourne but it has some truly award winning nerd stores (everyone, go visit Shin Tokyo! Go now!) and we sacrificed a respectable amount of moolah at the Altar of Geek before washing up at the Opeth gig Thursday night.

OPETHIAN OBSERVATIONS

• Windmilling guitarists' heads look like adorable tennis balls whirling about on rubber bands
• Samantha Escarbe from Virgin Black(the support band) is pretty damn good
• Mikael Åkerfeldt is a funny bastard
• Martin Axenrot may look like Legolas but Legolas could never drum like that
• Opeth are freaking unbelivable live

The atmosphere was great, everyone was there for the music and even though Awesome and I are both quite short we had no problem seeing the show and didn’t get stepped on once!

When we surfaced on Friday there was recovery time and then I took the overnight coach back to Melbourne. A word of advice:

DON'T TAKE THE FREAKING OVERNIGHT COACH!

There is less foghorn mobile talking than the day coach but it can be bloody difficult to get any sleep depending on a) whether you can get comfortable and b) what you think the likelihood is of the person next to you doing something to you whilst you sleep. Also they will try to make you watch Grace Is Gone.

DO NOT WATCH! Listen to Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Radio Edit or something.

I rolled into Melbourne at 6:40am (blergh!), trolled around the city like a zombie splurging more cash on comics and sundries before realising that I am already not as young as I once was and catching a Nanna-nap at a mate’s place before the Disturbed concert.

DISTURBED OBSERVATIONS

• Yelling out the band’s entire discography in the form of requests/suggestions does not impress anyone, fella, we know the names of the songs too
• Hannibal Lecter gear is a simple and elegant choice of evening garb for a vocalist
• Boy I like dreadlocks…
• Disturbed are also damn good live*****

There were more shaved heads and ‘Hey, can your mother sew, pal?’ types about but the mood was still pretty decent. I did have to spend the entire P.O.D set standing in line for beer but then I bought double beer and was very very happy.So at the end of it all I have spent about 20 hours on the road, about 15 hours on the piss, about 7 hours at concerts, I have to turn my entire body like Robocop to look at anything on the periphery (as I may have overdone it just a tad with the rawking) and I’m pretty sure I’m coming down with something but that’s A-OK with me.
Everyone at work should have recovered from the last bug they tried to foist on me and I’ll be bringing them something exciting from interstate to deal with.
Now I’m just going to have a little bit of a lie down and try to stop grinning like a loon.



*Whenever one person gets sick at my work everybody gets sick in a pattern that could probably be excitingly depicted by toppling rows of dominoes, if as each domino recovered from its first fall it was knocked over again with decreasing frequency until all the dominoes had become immune to that current ailment in time to catch the next one.
**Opeth’s Melbourne show sold out in June and I do not take defeat gracefully.
***It seems like every couple of years every band in the world throws down rock-paper-scissors and they all agree to come to Australia at the same time (if you don’t believe me have a look at this year’s line up) and in previous years I have been too poor. Not any more capricious universe! I have some monies!
****Complete with vehement declarations that ‘You’ve got your f*cking money, don’t dare call me again!’
***** So now I am chock full of high expectations. Everyone I see must be awesome live or they will feel my wrath! Or be entirely unaware of it. Either/or.

Sweet Jiminy Christmas!

Crap in a hat it’s almost September!
How the hell did that happen? Where did the rest of the year go?
I don’t remember slipping into a coma but I suppose you wouldn’t… though if I did you'd think people would at least have the decency to ask me how I was recovering…
Anyway, it’s almost September which is practically October which – apart from heralding the indecently early arrival of Christmas carols in the stores – is right next to November which, as everyone knows, is NaNoWriMo time. Holy shits!

I haven’t done any preparation at all!
After I dragged myself weakened but victorious to the end of last November I had all these plans of writing various length pieces of a specific nature, having plotting practices and working on my dialogue until it sparkled like a very sparkly thing but um… I didn’t do that.
Oh jeez, what am I going to do!?
I already used a swag of ideas to get through last year’s run!
What if I can’t think of any more!?
What if that was it and I end up staring blankly at the screen, the cursor burning its blinking image onto my retinas as a cold sweat breaks out of my brow!?
No! Keep it together Ricochet! You can do this!
Stop listening to the Doubty McLogic part of your brain! When has logic ever done you any favours? You’re barely on speaking terms except when it comes to contemplating how to ‘remove the head or destroy the brain’ in the event of zombmergencies.

This fun-time panic all boils down to the fact that I can indeed talk a lot of shash but wouldn’t even be able to keep my own interest for 50,000 words without some kind of structure and direction. Being equal parts lazy and – if I’m being honest – perennially terrified of failure there is always the temptation to bail out on an idea when finding a Step B to follow my current Step A gets particularly difficult.
Finding a story worth telling is also tricksy – on an entertainment level or a deeper meaning level – as I certainly don’t want to end up with the ‘let’s say there’s a person a lot like me except with awesome powers/abilities and she saves the day and totally shows all those people who gave her crap; also she has this mysterious and alluringly dangerous guy hanging around her who in no way resembles any pre-existing sexy fictional characters’ story. If that kind of thing is allowed to run unchecked it can go very very wrong and the sense of achievement at the end wouldn’t be as high as an effort of 50,000 words should warrant.

I guess it’s just time to buckle down and have a think about the basics and psyche myself up to actually let something really bad happen to a couple of my characters this time.
I am such a wussie when it comes to really putting the screws to my little darlings. They give you the most betrayed looks. Big eyed puppy dogs have nothing on figments of your imagination who only wanted to live free under an endless sky and not accidentally or deliberately get booted off the top of a 20-storey parking structure just to keep your plot moving along.

Hmm, you know that could work…
Just have to calculate the velocity of a plummeting 80 kg man, factor in the wind resistance for the Panda suit and the probable impact on the vehicle below… let’s say it's a Rav 4…

I Gave My Love A Chicken, It Had No Bones...

It's 11am on a Saturday and I have just made myself pizza for breakfast.
This is in keeping with the Healthy Weekend MealsTM that brought us such breakfast dishes as steamed dim sims, mystery left-overs with sauce and half a block of jarlsberg served with salt and vinegar pringles.
Oh sure, I had cereal in the house. I had bread for toast. Hell, I even had bacon and eggs but pfft!
How pedestrian!
How everyday!
Sure, any one of those other more traditional options would have been quicker to prepare and possibly better for me but... I didn't wanna.

It's so refreshing to be able to stamp your feet and pout and say "I don't wanna!" and then realise that you don't gotta!
You can eat pizza for breakfast!
You can go down to the supermarket wearing those clothes!
You can go to bed without brushing your teeth!
The face-melting morning breath, increased risk of cavities and strange looks in the supermarket are nobody's concern but your own!

Heck, I'd be jumping on my bed right now if I wasn't sure that I would instantly plunge through the floor of my upstairs flat and land on the family below. It could be kind of cool... but no!
The little girl downstairs thought I was a vampire, I want to preserve a mind like that*.

Of course, there are perils to doing everything you want...**

But it's nice to have the option.



*She never saw me during the day and only heard me moving around at night and drew the obvious conclusion. It is without a doubt the most awesome thing that anyone has ever said to me :-D Whatever that says about me...

**Oh Randall Munroe, how I love thee!